Knight Ceo Out To Clarify Bcs Stand

A dissenting opinion about whether the NCAA should control the Bowl Championship Series has caused some blurring of fact and opinion, and Hodding Carter is trying to clear up the misconceptions.

Following a recent series of meetings about the future of college athletics, William Friday, chairman of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, said, "It is imperative that the NCAA be able to govern postseason football. This objective should command the immediate attention of the NCAA Board of Directors."

The 11 Division I-A conference commissioners now control the BCS, college football's self-described national championship system. Not surprisingly, conference leaders met Friday's comments with pursed lips.

Then came commissioner and board of directors member Mary Sue Coleman, the University of Michigan's president, who told the Indianapolis Star: "In some ways, Bill is presenting his own view."

In the wake of those sets of remarks, NCAA President Myles Brand in a recent Orlando Sentinel interview said he thought Friday was speaking for himself, not for the commission.

Carter, president and chief executive officer of the Knight Foundation, strongly disagrees with that assertion. In an e-mail to Brand, copied to the Sentinel, Carter said Friday's position was very much the same as that of the commission, a nonprofit watchdog of college athletics.

"It was a position behind which the overwhelming majority of those in attendance [were] willing to stand," Carter wrote. "It has also been a subject of continuing discussion by the commission since last fall, or, viewed from another perspective, for 14 years. . . .

"What is not accurate -- and would be a malicious slander if it continues to make its way into public print -- is any intimation that Bill somehow hijacked the commission's position and reshaped it in his own image. The fact of the situation is that he left the conversation up to the commissioners and very carefully did not try to bend it one way or the other."